anyone using the new Kronos by korg ? any good ?

From the demos I say NAY. Native instruments pianos are better. Also I think the sylenth1 synth, tryel nexus 6, and omnisphere with alchemy will take you way further than the kronos for a lot less money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3esGrMLKlzA

This demo is ok. But still, i prefer the new VSTS.

It is a bloody impressive instrument. If I had the disposable income for it, I'd consider it.

However, I'm pretty satisified with my DAW and wouldn't really get the Kronos for better sounds per se, but just better inspiration. And if that matters to you, by all means get the Kronos.

When I first played it, I was blown away by it. Now unfortunately even if I was to be able to afford it, I don't think I'll be able to utilize it completely. hth.

From playing both in person, I say nope. Kronos pianos are better.

If I had the money, I'd buy it.
SO far all demos I watched were very impressive.

I tried the kronos at my local dealer and i was blown away from its overall sound.

The integrated Karma mechanism is also very useful.

When i get the money i will buy one this year.

Haven't tried it but it sounds good judging from the YT video. I have a Kurzweil PC3x and I doubt the Kronos can offer me something I don't have already. (apart from a bigger display)
The Kronos sounds very glossy. There must be some dirty Rhodes or Wurlitzers in there?

There are. But personally, Kurzweil has way better distortions...

Feature wise it looks compelling, until I read that it has a fan, Linux is its backbone OS, and people are suffering sudden Kronos-deaths with their units and no one knows why. It's not really hardware. It's a more compact & identity-confused DAW. I'm not pleased with this way of "competing" with DAWs & plugins. I want hardware to be hardware. But it's sucked on lots of brands for a while now. They're having trouble finding a graceful place to live in a market owned by software. Hardware has been foolishly treated to the downsides of software (bugs, unfinished initial development/beta releases, abandonment, etc). The Virus TI was blasted for bugs but they since sorted it & STILL update the OS for users of the original. That's a winner. A loser is Alesis.. My Alesis Fusion has connectors that do nothing & the user guide lies about other connectors. (that's just for starters) Then there's my Receptor 1: another loser; it hasn't seen an update in ages, despite the fact that it's just a computer with an OS on it. Official talk of offering an upgrade path to the newer OS started then silently went nowhere. I'm not buying a trade-in upgrade just to see the Receptor 2 is still clumsy, uniwire still poor, & equally abandoned OS. What a waste of money this thing was. If you want hardware, buy real hardware. Problem is we now have to research the hidden tech details to find out what's real hardware any more.

Heh. I'm saying nothing useful at all. Sorry. I'll piss off & try to program some interesting sounds on my Korg M3 since the factory sounds are way too polite (the emulations of natural instruments ride the line between "good in a mix" & greatly inferior to large sample sets found in even factory conten in Kontakt 3). Great (real) hardware and GUI, though. I just wish the sounds were at all compelling. The Kronos implies a FAR wider sound palette by default (like the Alesis Fusion, though they never actually utilized anything but the sample player engine in their sound set and all credit for what's good about even that goes to Hollow Sun's great efforts, thanks Steve!). But again, Kronos is customized Linux on customized hardware which suffers from the same issues that customized Linux on customized hardware tends to suffer.

Whee! Technology is STAGNENT!!

Jace-BeOS - hardware has stopped being hardware when analog synths got memory and patch storage, when Fairlights, Synclaviers, DX-7 etc. came, which are all running software, basically


BTW - Yamaha Motif XS/XF are also running on Linux. So what's wrong with Linux? It's a really stable OS, and praised for that.

No, in my opinion (for the pile of salt that's worth), hardware was still hardware up to and until it ran generic computer operating systems laced with code & functionality that doesn't belong in dedicated audio equipment. Instead of designing hardware to meet a specific purpose, they modify existing software to adapt to a less than focused goal. It's the cheap way to go instead of engineering the most appropriate hardware, using dedicated electronics technology developed specifically for the things needed in a focused-purpose device, DSP chips & whatnot, & writing control software for it explicitly, they use monolithic operating system code created for different purposes (several of which it also isn't ideally suited for), because it's available freely & requires far less engineering, throwing equally generic code on it, rewriting parts of it to do what it wasn't engineered to do, etc. Actually, hard drives were where things started to get out of hand. Or maybe "acceptable GUIs" are where it started. My M3, V-Synth, Fusion & Akai S6000 all take a minute or two to even produce a sound and they all are custom DSP and whatnot.

Trust me, I'm as bothered by computers and their operating systems. Seeing the same stuff bleed into what was formerly rather immediate devices and unique engineering, making basic functions (startup/shutdown, navigation) beyond ridiculously slower (it's sad how conditioned everyone is to thinking this is normal)... Meh. Don't mind me. I hate that technology is so backwards due to 30 years of market BS.

I dunno.

Yep I agree that hardware is software these days and it's been like that for a good long while. The big difference is hardware is optimized hardware and it's compartimentalized hardware. Which, computers really weren't specifically designed to do. I'll give cred to using Linux based operating systems as they utilize processing more effectively then windows or osx. That's just fact.

As far as receptor goes. If it's not broke why fix it. Sturdy and reliable wins over flashy and faulty everyday. Sure I'd love to see something inbetween receptor and muse box. Something like a big sturdy no slim pretty tablet with direct midi in wired to the pci rather then usb. easy access screen to everything you need it when you need it but. I don't think that's going to happen.

Excellent. Money saved then....and space too

Mine will be here this weekend finally,originally I lusted for the O, but it was so out of reach I gave up on that dream.7 years later,much more development and a much better price ,I was able to save some scrap n purchase it.
I've been missing great keys for awhile,and these are the same as the ones in my M3 I sold,which I loved.

I got a chance to demo it in person, and was sorta blown away by the sheer power of the synths,the keys,ssd,everything.
Sure I can use my cpu and softsynths and I always will,but it was time for a workstation again, n this one fit.